The Guardian
by usa123
Summary: or "Five Times The Winter Soldier Saved Captain America's Life and One Time Steve Saved His". Post Captain America: The Winter Soldier. No slash, no ships.


**A/N: This is just another piece that sat on my hard drive for months before I had the chance to brush it off. I hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: The characters belong to Marvel; I'm just borrowing them for a little while. The second situation belongs to DC's Losers. I don't own them either.**

* * *

**1.**

It wasn't like he _meant _to follow Steve Rogers to Colombia. It had just kinda _happened_.

Well…if The Soldier was being completely honest with himself, that was a lie. Whether he liked it or not, his life was somehow deeply intertwined with one Steven Grant Rogers' and until he figured out what their connection was (or more accurately, had been), he found himself unable to let his target out of his sight.

He'd done his best to escape D.C. after the demise of SHIELD but had only made it to the city limits before his programming kicked in. As much as he fought to ignore it, he had turned around within the mile, narrowly avoiding a programming-induced blackout.

He'd wandered up and down the surrounding neighborhoods until he found a home that was well-maintained but currently empty, as if the owners were on vacation. He easily entered through the back and discovered that the owners were doing something called "snowbirding" in Arizona for the next six months. His new base of operations acquired, he proceeded to clean out the storage unit his handler had stocked with weapons, gear, money and new identification when he had first begun this mission.

As he distributed his weapons over his temporary residence, he considered the fact that he wasn't sure he _wanted_ to complete his mission. His programming kicked in so suddenly that The Soldier fell to his knees, his hands pressed against the side of his face, trying to massage away the excruciating pain in his temples. What felt like hours later, the agony subsided and he collapsed to the ground. When he could think clearly again, he decided he would continue to surveil Steve Rogers, if for no other reason than to appease his programming.

He'd waited a few days for the police presence to die down before he'd broken into the Captain America exhibit in the Smithsonian. He eagerly read every word on the walls, stands and screens, hoping that one of them would trigger a flashback, that one of them would remind him of who he used to be. But it was of no use: after six long hours in the exhibit, he didn't feel any more like the man his target had called "Bucky". For better or worse, he was stuck between who he was now and who his target thought he should be.

Slightly disheartened, The Soldier continued to spend his waking hours either watching his target and the strange group of people his target surrounded himself with, or reading as much as he could about his target's past. The recon itself felt familiar, just like it had for every other mission, but there was something about watching this particular man just felt incredibly _right_. He told himself it was because anyone else taking out Captain America would mean he failed his mission but, deep down, he knew better. After the emptiness he experienced, even the littlest bit of familiarity was encouraging.

Then, ten days after the Triskelion had fallen, Rogers received a call from an unregistered number. The caller said he had information about the Winter Soldier's current location and that Rogers should meet him in two days if he was interested. (The Soldier knew about the phone call because he had paid a kid to run into Rogers and plant the tracker on his phone.) The Soldier couldn't remember if he'd even been to Colombia, but this situation had "trap" not so subtly written all over it.

Rogers decided to follow the lead anyway, despite the protests of his new friend, Sam Wilson, codename: The Falcon. (The Soldier overheard _this_ conversation because he may or may not have broken into an electronic store, _acquired_ up some audio recording equipment and planted them in his target's apartment.)

The Soldier had planned on simply following his target to the airfield, to make sure Rogers actually left, before using the time to research more about this Hydra he had supposedly been working for. When the government-issued quinjet lifted off though, his chest had constricted and his heart raced. Before he could string two coherent thoughts together, he had commandeered a nearby puddle-jumper and had taken off after the quinjet.

Six hours later, the quinjet landed on a small field and The Soldier was forced to veer to the right to avoid detection. With his enhanced sight, he saw two men in full-combat gear climb out the back of the jet, then motion for the pilot to take off.

They were going in without backup. Super soldier or not, that was just plain stupid.

The Soldier flew wide circles until the men had left the field, at which point he touched down in a small clearing not far away and hurried after them. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he felt more normal than he had in weeks.

By the time he got to the rendezvous point, Wilson and Rogers had already disappeared. Assuming they had gone in at the ground level, The Soldier easily scaled the side of the warehouse. He peered through the skylight and saw Rogers surrounded by five heavily-armed men. His target only had a moment to brace himself before the men attacked in unison.

The Soldier's gut was twinging uncomfortably, but he forced himself to not intervene: his target and that stupid shield were doing a fairly decent job of keeping blows from connecting. In just a few minutes, he had even managed to take out two of his attackers.

Then, one of the men pulled out a handgun and Rogers just managed to get his shield up in time to deflect the bullet. In that split second, the man behind him pulled out a long rod and jammed one end into Rogers' neck, in the patch of bare skin between his helmet and his uniform.

Steve dropped like a rock, his entire body spasming wildly, and The Soldier saw red.

He'd ripped the skylight off its hinge and dropped silently through it before he was fully aware of his actions. In the midst of his descent, he saw the three remaining men begin to brutally kick the semi-conscious Captain America, who was barely able to tuck his head under his arm to avoid brain damage. Even from this distance, The Soldier could see the full-body tremors racking Rogers' body.

One of the men had kicked the shield away. The Soldier effortlessly scooped it up without breaking stride and slid it onto his flesh arm. He sprinted stealthily toward the men, who were paying him no attention.

Their mistake.

The Soldier slammed the shield into the closest man, flinging him across the warehouse. In the same motion, he shifted his weight onto his right leg and kicked at a second man's knee. He heard a bone snap and the man crumpled to the ground, screaming in pain. The Soldier landed a solid kick to his head, not even caring if it was strong enough to cause decapitation, and the man fell silent.

By this time, the third man swung the rod at The Soldier, but the assassin blocked it with the shield, then reached around and batted it out of the man's hand. (He would later learn that the rod delivered a 50,000 Volt, .1 amp shock. It had clearly been designed to take down supersoldiers since no normal human would survive that assault.)

The man's eyes widened and he hurriedly drew a pistol, but with another swing of the shield, the gun was skittering across the room.

The Soldier stepped over Rogers, who was still twitching, his eyes squeezed closed and his jaw clenched so tightly that the veins in his neck were visibly pulsing, and punched the third man in the jaw. The man stumbled, but remained upright. The Soldier then drove his metal fist into the man's midsection, twisting in the same motion so that the flat of the shield slammed into the point of the man's chin and sent him crashing into a nearby support column.

"Hey!" The Soldier heard someone, probably Wilson, shout. Without looking back, he flung the shield with a fraction of his typical strength in the direction of the voice and sprinted out of the warehouse, tearing through the thin corrugated steel wall in the process.

On his way back to his borrowed jet, he barely managed to avoid a full TAC team who was racing toward the warehouse. The Soldier was ready to take them out as well, until he saw they were being led by a flaming red-head, the one he'd shot under the bridge.

Apparently Rogers hadn't gone in without backup.

_He was learning_. The thought jumped into his mind before The Soldier had a chance to repress it. He pushed away a vague sense of déjà vu and hustled back to the jet.

A few feet off the ground, something tore through one of his wings and he realized the people on the ground were shooting at him. He forced himself not to engage and lifted higher and higher, until he was out of firing range and heading back to his current residence in D.C. As a tribute to the new identity he was building, he returned the plane in the same condition he'd borrowed it in, with the exception of the bullet holes in the right wing.

He used the next few hours while Rogers and Wilson were flying back from Colombia (and hopefully receiving medical care) to install a small surveillance camera in one of the bookshelves in Steve's living room.

A few hours after that, he watched his target limp back into his apartment, one arm cradling his torso. He was followed closely by Wilson, who had a thick bandage taped to his forehead and one arm in a sling.

Rogers dropped onto the couch, hissed softly when one of his injuries apparently came into contact with the backing.

"You should have stayed in the hospital," Wilson remarked, carefully lowering himself into a plush armchair.

Rogers shot Wilson an incredulous look that translated well over the grainy footage. (The Soldier felt a twinge of recognition at that look—had it been directed at him at one point in time?) "Hi pot, I'm kettle," Rogers quipped, the corner of his mouth turning up ever so slightly.

Wilson snorted then immediately grimaced as his lip split open again. "Touché, Rogers."

"You don't remember anything about the man who helped me?" his target asked after a brief pause.

"I told you, I only saw his back for like a second before he rabbited. Could have been anyone."

"Yeah," Rogers sunk further into the couch, his expression pensive. "Could have been anyone."

Even through the camera, The Soldier could tell that his target was not convinced.

* * *

**2.**

After that, The Soldier took a more serious interest in the life of Steve Rogers, the man who didn't appear to have an ounce of self-preservation in his body. Someone had to look out for him, and his new "team" was just not cutting it.

With nothing much to do other than make sure his target didn't get himself killed before The Soldier was ready to complete his mission, said Soldier had had plenty of time to familiarize himself with the modern age. He had tapped into new SHIELD's comm frequency (really, if he could do it with a "Technology for Dummies" book, new SHIELD needed to hire some better computer experts)…which is how he heard about his target's new mission.

Ahmed Khalfan Fadhil was a drug dealer who was known to have contacts with some of the Hydra agents buried within old SHIELD. One Phil Coulson, a person of interest and leader of the new SHIELD, wanted to use Fadhil's information to suss out any surviving Hydra agents. Steve and the archer, Clint Barton, were planning on breaching Fadhil's residence with a four-man team. Unfortunately, Fadhil had caught wind of their arrival and had hidden in his mansion with three of the children he was using to unknowingly transport the drugs.

The Soldier peered down the scope of the sniper rifle his handler had so thoughtfully provided him and was able to see a dark-haired man, presumably Fadhil, holding a teenage girl in front of him, his handgun jammed against her temple. Rogers was standing directly in front of him, hands up in surrender, his shield slung onto his back. Clad in a darker uniform with a helmet that didn't cover his ears, he had just broken down the door and had been ordered to freeze, or the girl would be killed.

"You don't have to do this," he heard Rogers say. "Just let the girl go."

"Why? So you can take me into custody—"

"I don't have a shot, repeat _I do not have a shot_. Steve's in my way." Barton's voice crackled over the comms.

"Can you get a better angle?" a deeper male voice asked.

"Probably not," Barton muttered. "But I'll try. Keep him talking Cap."

The Soldier heard packing, shifting and muttered cursing. Through the scope, he saw Rogers try to step left, but Fadhil noticed and shouted at him to stop moving as he thrust the barrel of his weapon harder into the girl's head.

Rogers immediately froze.

This was taking way too long. The Soldier doesn't know how he knows this, but he knows that the longer they wait, the worse the situation will get.

"No shot from here either. Not unless Cap can recover from a headshot," Barton reported.

Just because new SHIELD couldn't make the shot, didn't mean that there wasn't someone in the vicinity who could. The Soldier loaded a hollow point into the chamber and pressed himself against the rifle. He blocked out the activity over the comms and focused on his breathing. Through the scope, he saw Fadhil pull the gun away from the girl and begin to train it on Rogers.

The Soldier fired.

As Fadhil crumpled to the ground, a neat hole between his eyes, Rogers instantly dove forward, yanking the girl behind him and kicking the gun out of Fadhil's lax hand. After he was certain Fadhil was indeed dead, he picked up the girl and tucked her head into his shoulder, so she didn't have to witness the gory scene around her. In doing so, his hand brushed past his ear, where blood was dripping from the outer cartilage. "Cut that one a bit close, Clint."

"I didn't take the shot," Barton replied, his tone conveying his surprise. "I still don't have an angle."

The Soldier had repacked his rifle and was long gone before new SHIELD figured out where the shot had most likely come from.

* * *

**3.**

He can't help it. It's like a compulsion, following Steve Rogers, watching him interact with his new team.

A few months later, the Avengers had teamed up with the local cops to fight a group that was determined to burn New York City to the ground, to begin again, put down fresh roots, do it right this time, blah, blah blah, blah blah. They had managed to set only a few buildings on fire before the Avengers arrived. After the team had taken down the three leaders, The Soldier saw Rogers glance at the burning building. After a second, Rogers cocked his head, like he heard something, and sprinted in.

The Soldier cursed under his breath and hurried to the fire engine, knowing at least one of them should have a decent oxygen supply. He pulled his ball cap lower on his face and tapped one of the firemen on the shoulder, making up some story about a second fire. The man told his partner he'd check it out and no, he won't go in without him, before following The Soldier away from the crowd.

Once they were in an alley, out of sight of all passersby, The Soldier pulled the man into a headlock.

"Don't struggle," he told him. "I don't want to hurt you."

The man didn't listen, of course, but The Soldier kept himself in check and just knocked him out. Then he slipped into the fireman's gear, hoping he attached at least some of the parts correctly. He blasted past the fire truck and hurried into the building.

Three flights of stairs later, he located Rogers, who had found a family stuck in their apartment. The Soldier watched from the doorway as Rogers handed the family members out the window to a metal suit (Tony Stark, alias Iron Man) and a man who looked like he should be auditioning for shampoo commercials (apparently his name was Thor and he was not from this planet). The two Avengers secured the family and looked expectantly at Rogers.

"You can't carry all of us," Rogers stated. "I'll find my way back down."

Iron Man looked The Soldier straight in the eye and the asset momentarily panicked, forgetting he was in disguise. "Get out safely," a metallic voice intoned before Thor and Iron Man disappeared.

Rogers glanced over his shoulder at The Soldier. "That's all of 'em. Let's get out—" Suddenly, a loud cracking sound ripped through the room and the roof of the apartment crashed down on Rogers. The Soldier, who had been standing under the doorframe, was unharmed.

His target's name was torn from his lips before The Soldier even realized he was screaming. The heat kicked up in intensity, but he ignored it and started pulling beams out of his way, looking for Rogers.

In the midst of his search, a small voice asked why he didn't just let Rogers die. His mission would be completed and he could start an entirely new life—

Then, he turned over the next board and found his target lying face down, bleeding from a head wound. Safety protocol be damned, The Soldier bundled Rogers into his arms and sprinted out of the front of the apartment complex before the entire roof crashed down.

He handed Steve over to the paramedics and quickly disappeared to strip out of the fireman's uniform. Back in his original disguise, his chin tucked into his shoulder for additional protection, he hovered by the ambulance until he heard one EMT say that Steve's uniform had apparently protected him from the worst of the burns, but that he'd need a full panel of X-rays and a chest CT just to make sure.

That was good enough for The Soldier. His target would live to be assassinated another day.

Not long after that, the firemen found their friend unconscious but alive in the alley, unable to identify the man who had stolen his uniform and rescued Captain America.

* * *

**4.**

The Soldier was seriously wondering if that shield was doing more harm than good. Apparently everybody and their brother was gunning for the star-spangled bull's-eye on Steve's back. His new mission should have been a piece of cake: escort a witness from a super-secret WitSec housing facility to the Federal Building where she could testify against one of the bad guys new SHIELD had managed to put away.

Apparently Hydra hadn't changed their radio frequencies and The Soldier had accidentally been privy to a kill order for one Evangeline Smith, Steve's witness. Everyone else was collateral damage, up to the assassin's discretion.

The Soldier was out the door in an instant. He broke into the first unattended car he saw and hotwired it, immensely glad that some things hadn't changed from his day. The walkie was still blaring—one crew accepted the hit and was en route!—as The Soldier stomped on the accelerator. It didn't take him long to catch up to Steve's car (which was so nondescript, it stuck out like a sore thumb) and the car that was obviously following it. No, not the Crown Vic that was obviously the police escort—the black SUV behind it.

Without a second thought, The Soldier pulled alongside the SUV and spun the wheel left. The nose of his car slammed into a spot just behind the back wheel well of the SUV, sending the larger car spinning in a perfectly executed Pitt maneuver.

The car crashed into the median and ground to a screeching halt. The Soldier brought his own car to a stop, then hurried over to the SUV where he ripped off the passenger door and knocked both men unconscious before disappearing into the rapidly-developing crowd.

The tail car stopped long enough to let out Romanov before continuing to follow Rogers and the witness. The Widow immediately took control of the scene, pushing back the onlookers. Her weapon drawn, she examined the unconsciousness men, and realized that she knew of only one man who could have delivered a blow like that with such precision, essentially stunning but not permanently incapacitating the men. She looked around but knew it would be useless.

The Winter Soldier was long gone.

* * *

**5.**

Two months after that, Steve went missing. Like fallen-off-the-face-of-the-earth missing. He was supposed to go on a date with a girl from accounting (The Soldier had forgotten her name but she looked like the type of woman Steve would actually enjoy dating) but he never showed. The woman, knowing how extraordinarily punctual Steve was, immediately called Coulson, who tasked every available agent with finding the missing Avenger after his apartment revealed signs of a struggle. The Soldier did his best to help with the search, even interrogating known criminals at night to see where Steve had been taken.

Three days later, the superfriends had their first lead. Less than an hour after that, The Soldier was pulling up to the location where Rogers was supposedly being held. The Soldier hurried through the building, clearing it one floor at a time. He ran into a few night guards but quickly and efficiently incapacitated them. Finally, he arrived at the fifth floor, where he peered through the small glass window set at shoulder-height into the door and saw Steve sitting in the middle of the room, secured to a reinforced chair with thick metallic cuffs. Steve's head was lolling limply against his chest and an IV was stuck into his inner elbow.

The Soldier burst through the door and took out two of the three guards with small metal discs he had lifted from new SHIELD. Then he turned to the survivor and pointed at the bag of fluid attached to the back of Steve's chair.

"What are you giving him?"

The survivor shook his head, his entire body trembling.

The Soldier pulled a gun from his belt and fired. The technician howled in pain and collapsed to the ground, blood gushing from the wound in his thigh.

"Let's try that again. What's in the IV?" The Soldier growled, aiming the gun at the man's head.

The technician mumbled something the assassin didn't understand.

"IN ENGLISH!" The Soldier bellowed.

"It's a sedative," the tech replied, through heaving gasps. "Souped up to counter his metabolism."

The Soldier nodded, then flipped his gun around and smashed it into the man's cheekbone. His head cracked against the tile, the sound echoing through the now empty room, but the Soldier was no longer focused on the scientists.

He immediately pulled the IV from Steve's arm and lifted his head, resting it against the back of the chair. Before he could consider the ramifications of his actions, The Soldier found himself pushing damp hair out of Steve's face so he could better examine his mission. One eye was swollen closed as a result of the deep cut just above his brow, but other than that he seemed uninjured. The Soldier was well-versed in Steve's healing rate, so the fact that his eye was still swollen meant the wound was very recent. Suddenly, he wished he hadn't gone so easy on the guards.

"Buck?" Steve slurred, shocking his childhood friend. The Soldier snapped back to the present and saw Steve struggling to keep his other eye open. "Knew…it…w's…you," he mumbled incoherently.

"Yeah, Stevie, I'm here," The Soldier heard himself say as he yanked at the straps restraining Steve. He cursed as he realized Steve was bound with the über cuffs from old SHIELD. The Soldier knew from personal experience that he wouldn't be able to break them. He glanced around and saw that the chair Steve was bound to was welded to a metal plate set into the surrounding concrete. He wouldn't be able to pick up the chair and move Steve to safety either.

"Cap!" The Soldier heard a metallic voice (Stark) shouting and rose to his feet. As much as he wanted to stay, he needed to be gone before the rest of the team arrived. At least he was assured his target was alive…for now.

He later heard Steve trying to convince the rest of the Avengers that he'd seen The Soldier. Oddly enough, none of them protested, like they had done months earlier.

* * *

**+1**

_This is the last mission_, The Soldier told himself. After this, he would make a decision. Would he complete his mission, or would he walk away?

He picked a helluva last mission: 6-foot tall, pill-shaped creatures with eight tentacles each were invading New York. It was no surprise that the Avengers had been called in.

With the team looking like they had their hands full, The Soldier decided he'd help out, maybe take on one or two tentacled creatures himself to reduce the load. Besides he hadn't been in a real fight in months.

He led one into an empty business and pounced. Unfortunately, he hadn't heard the briefing about their rather impressive speed and a tentacle was wrapped around his metal arm before he knew it. He yanked with all his might but he couldn't free himself. The tentacle suddenly tightened, crumpling the strong metal beneath it. Even though his forearm had no neural receptors, The Soldier howled with phantom pain, subconsciously recalling the agony of losing that arm in the first place.

A tentacle smacked him in the cheek, tearing it open and leaving the entire side of his face burning. Another wrapped around his legs and pulled them out from under him. One pinned his arms to the ground and a fifth (or was it one of the previous ones?) pressed against his face, its suction-cup-like extensions securing themselves over his nose and mouth, keeping him from breathing. He struggled, but with one useless metal arm, he didn't make much headway.

His vision began to darken as he bucked against the tentacles and he briefly thought that, after everything he had been through, he was about to be taken out by a walking octopus.

Then he heard a slicing sound and the tentacle pressed against his face loosened slightly. He shook his head and dislodged it, hungrily gasping for air.

A flash of red, white and blue and a few bangs later, and his arms and legs were free. Though his face was still feeling rather numb, he looked drowsily to his left and saw the creature lying in a crumpled heap, leaking some sort of orangish fluid.

Suddenly, Steve was kneeling beside him, pulling the remaining tentacles off him, his back turned to the injured creature. "Bucky," he breathed in relief. "I knew it was you."

The Soldier saw a flash of motion behind Steve and tried to get his frozen mouth to shout "Lookout!" but it was too late. A tentacle attached itself to Steve's shield and threw him into a wall. The Soldier tried to force himself upright, but the numbness had spread to his chest. It took all his remaining strength to lift his head off the ground. His vision tilted wildly but he was able to make out Steve pulling a small device from his pocket and pressing a black button. The device released a soft whine that The Soldier can barely hear but creature obviously hated, judging by the way it began thrashing.

Suddenly Steve was standing, throwing his shield, and orange goop was landing on The Soldier's chest.

Then, Rogers was kneeling beside him again, his face hovering above The Soldier's.

"Stay with me Buck!" Steve shouted but The Soldier wasn't really sure why. He was numb all over so he's clearly not going anywh—

* * *

Steve stared at the prone form of Bucky Barnes through an observation window, his amplified hearing easily able to pick up the hums, chirps and beeps of the monitors connected to his childhood friend. He braced himself against the windowsill and allowed his chin to drop toward his chest.

He didn't even look up when he heard the elevator doors ding a few minutes later. He knew who it was.

"I can't believe you brought him here!" Tony shouted, his angry footfalls getting closer and closer.

"We didn't have anywhere else to go," Steve said softly.

Tony gesticulated wildly toward Barnes. "He tried to kill you and you expect to just waltz back into the Tower—_my_ Tower—pretending—"

"If he wanted to kill me, he would have," Steve replied levelly. He believed that with every fiber of his being. Bucky had been one hell of a shot during the war. There was no way he had missed that severely on the helicarrier, or over the last ten months, for that matter. If Bucky had truly wanted Steve dead, he would have been six feet under by now.

"I have three doctors and two nurses on speed dial who will testify that he came pretty damn close." Tony pulled his phone from his pocket and waved it theatrically.

"That wasn't him!" Steve pounded his fist against the windowsill which immediately shattered, sending tiny bits of metal flying in all directions, and spun around to face his incensed teammate.

"Really? Cos it was either him or a damn good psychic with a cosplay obsession."

"If he wanted to kill me, he would have," Steve repeated, forcing himself to relax his clenched fists.

Tony shook his head and exhaled slowly between gritted teeth. "It's like talking to a wall," he muttered.

"You get it," Steve said slowly. "I know you do. When Pepper was infected with Extremis, you saved her—"

"Actually she saved _me_ but—"

"Did you ever doubt she was in there somewhere? That you wouldn't be able to get her back?"

Tony flinched visibly. "No," he ground out after a long moment.

"Then why is it any different with Bucky?"

Tony opened his mouth, then shook his head and closed it. After a beat, he raised his index finger into the air, then scowled and dropped it.

"It's not, is it?" Steve prompted.

"Pepper didn't hospitalize me," Tony finally blurted out, crossing his arms over chest petulantly.

The corner of Steve's mouth rose ever so slightly. "So my analogy isn't perfect."

Tony rolled his eyes, then walked over to the observation window and stared at Bucky.

"We'll do everything we can for him," Tony said, though from his tone, he obviously still disagreed.

"I appreciate it," Steve said, as he turned back around, able to watch both Tony and Barnes through the reflection in the glass.

* * *

"I do believe The Winter Soldier is awake." JARVIS announced twenty-two hours later, pulling Steve from his sleep.

"Call him Bucky, J," Tony said from over Steve's left shoulder. The soldier opened his eyes to find himself lying on an incredibly soft couch across from the observation window. Tony sat in a chair next to the armrest, fiddling with his phone.

"I will update my records."

Steve shrugged off the blanket that had appeared sometime during the last two hours and hurried over to the entrance to the state-of-the-art hospital room.

When the doors didn't immediately slide open, Steve looked up at the ceiling. "Please JARVIS?"

He could almost hear the AI sigh before the sliding doors slowly creaked to their respective walls. "Thank you," he said as he stepped into the airlock.

Time dripped by as he waited for the outer door to close entirely before the inner one opened. He took this time to evaluate his friend's condition. Bucky's metal arm had been removed for repair, the stump underneath wrapped in gauze. The baseplate had to be left in, but Stark and Dr. Banner had cleaned it to the best of their abilities. Other than the bandage covering the cheek the tentacle had split and the long hair that hung to his shoulders, Bucky looked just like Steve remembered.

Bucky's eyes flew open the moment Steve stepped into the room. Before the doors had zoomed closed, Bucky had reached for the IV pole with his metal arm and realized said arm was no longer attached. He quickly recalculated by grabbing his IV pole with his flesh hand and sprang out of bed. Pressing his back against the far wall, he held the pole out in front of him, the footed end facing Steve, who immediately splayed his hands and lifted them to shoulder height, trying to convey that he meant no harm.

"Where's my arm?" Bucky growled, leaning slightly to the left as if to compensate for the loss of his limb.

Steve could hear movement outside the sliding doors and knew Stark was suiting up, in case worse came to worse.

"It was ruined in the fight," he asked slowly, softly, as if talking to a child. Barnes' eyes were still wide and he was trembling with the effort of holding the pole away from his body. "The octopi, for lack of a better term, destroyed it. Tony—Howard's son—is seeing if he can realign the plates."

"I know who he is," Bucky responded, his voice rough. "It was in the mission briefing."

Steve nodded. "It took him so long to get it off of you so he wasn't sure he'd done it cleanly. Are you feeling okay?" he asked cautiously, keeping his distance.

"Get it back here. I can't—" Bucky forced his mouth closed before he could finish his sentence. "Give me my arm and I'll be on my way."

"We can't, Buck. The whole thing's ruined."

"Just let me go then." Bucky took a shaky step forward and almost dropped the IV pole.

"What did you do to me?" he asked, realizing his strength wasn't up to par.

"The tips of the tentacles were laced with poison," Steve pointed to the gauze on the other man's cheek. "Banner barely made it with the antidote."

"How nice," Bucky deadpanned. He slowly put down the IV pole and raised his flesh hand in a gesture that mirrored Steve's. "I'm just gonna go then."

"You can't, Bucky—"

"I. AM NOT. BUCKY!" The Soldier bellowed. Steve took a half-step back and instinctively assumed a defensive posture. When he realized what he had done, he forced himself to relax, even though his heart was hammering against his ribs. With his super hearing, he heard the soft whine of Tony's suit coming to life.

"Okay, _James_," Steve began cautiously, ready to stop if his friend objected. When he didn't react, Rogers continued, "I can't even imagine what you've been through, what's been done to you, but you can't just walk out that door. I know we don't seem like the most…together…group but we'll do whatever it takes to help you."

The Soldier was so genuinely surprised that he stopped escaping in order to get an answer to his next question. "I tried to kill you. Why are you trying to help me?"

"I told you: you're my friend. And somewhere deep down you know that too. Otherwise you wouldn't have pulled me from the river, saved me from the ass-kicking in Colombia, or carried me out of that fire on 5th."

The Soldier slid down the wall and dropped bonelessly to the ground. When Steve saw this, he made a quick motion with his hand, signaling Tony to back down.

"I know there were more," he continued. "The sniper, the witsec car. Each time you could have done nothing and your mission would have been completed. But you didn't. You chose to help me. And that's how I know that the Bu—James Barnes I once knew is in there somewhere."

Steve took a small step forward, hedging a bet, his hands still raised. "We always had each other's backs."

"Don't come any closer," Barnes whispered, pressing himself further into the wall, as if trying to put as much distance as possible between him and Steve. "I don't…"

Steve instantly returned to the far wall.

"I just want to help. All of us…we just want to help," he repeated.

He watched James for a long moment and, when his friend didn't object, Steve sat down and rested his head against the wall.

"I don't want to hurt you," James mumbled sometime later, before the machine he had become cut off those thoughts. "But I don't know how _not_ to."

His working hand instantly shot up to his head, prepared for the pain that usually followed such independent thinking, but the pain never came. He quickly ran through a series of thoughts that were utterly forbidden while he had been The Soldier. Though his conditioning still treated the man across from him as his mission and the need to _kill _coursed through his veins, the physical reminder had been completely eliminated. "It's gone," he breathed in amazement.

"Tony found a computer chip that was reading your muscular impulses and translating them into signals your arm could understand," Steve explained, hoping this was indeed what James was referring to. "It's completely destroyed, so we can't get any data from it, but he thinks it might have been a transmitter as well."

"It was," James confirmed. Though he said nothing else, Steve was fairly certain his childhood friend looked relieved.

They sat silently, with James staring at the ground and Steve watching his friend, until James' eyelids began to droop.

"It's more comfortable on the bed," Steve commented, carefully rising to his feet. "I'll go so you can get some rest."

James' face fractured and for a second Steve thought his friend was going to ask him to stay.

"Okay," he rasped, waiting until the inner door had closed before he hauled himself into the bed.

"No, I don't have a plan," he heard Steve tell Stark as he drifted off to sleep. "All I have is a start and right now, that's good enough for me."

* * *

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